


Amateur Botany

by ByCandlelight



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Humor, Some violence to plants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 15:05:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11603112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ByCandlelight/pseuds/ByCandlelight
Summary: In which Harry Potter lacks survival skills, and Draco Malfoy has an overdeveloped interest in Muggle plants.





	Amateur Botany

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [subwaywall](http://archiveofourown.org/users/subwaywall/pseuds/subwaywall) for editing.

Honestly, when Harry Potter became an auror, he had thought it would be a little more exciting than this. 

Sure, there were the potions smuggling rings and the late night chases down dark alleys that he had signed up for, but there was also a lot of paperwork and talking to witnesses and suspects and taking reports for minor crimes.

Take the current situation. The most important case on his desk involved the smuggling of an endangered fern from Northern Germany--the Frivolously Feathered Fern to be precise. Most likely, the ferns were being sold through some legitimate purveyor of magical plants. 

Harry could recognize the importance of this case. Really, he could. Even if the fate of endangered plant species did not exactly tug at his heartstrings, he still understood that the situation was problematic. 

All that taken into account still didn’t change the petty, boring realities of this particular case--namely, having to interview the 23 sellers of magical plants who possessed a license to import them from the continent.

And that was just the list of the most likely suspects. An unlicensed individual, with a bit of creativity, could just as well be responsible.

It was late in the day, and Harry had just apparated to the doorstep of the seventh herbologist on his list. The previous six had been eager to help (they were much more appalled at the idea of plant trafficking than Harry was) but had been unable to provide any useful information.

Neither had any of them seemed worthy of suspicion, so thus far, this investigation was a bust.

This was definitely going to be his last interview of the day. Even the best of men could only take so many musty shops, strange-smelling plants, and socially awkward herbologists in a day.

As her opened the peeling door of Wiggins Rare Plants and Potting Soil, Harry’s mind was elsewhere. He thought ahead to the evening. Once they were both off for the day, maybe he and Ron could go to the pub. Sure, it was the middle of the week, but it had been a frustrating day, and Harry could use a bit of a pick-me-up. 

Anyways, he wouldn’t have anything stronger than a butter beer. Probably.

The store’s owner wasn’t immediately in sight, so he poked around for a couple of minutes until she emerged--a short old witch who introduced herself as Mrs. Wiggins.

Harry explained the reason for his visit, attempting to come across as polite and attentive rather than just bored, and Mrs. Wiggins assured him that she would do all she could to help--horrible business, plant smuggling, but wouldn’t he like to have some tea first, tea and pasties?

Well, pasties always were Harry’s weakness. Besides, he’d skipped lunch.

And so Mrs. Wiggins led him to the store’s backroom, which, while just as cluttered, was possibly even dustier than the store’s front area. Harry began to feel a bit bad for her actually. From the state of things, she couldn’t see very much business. She was probably lonely.

Before she would discuss the matter at hand, she insisted that Harry have a cup of tea and two pumpkin pasty (I have so many, dear), which he agreed to, not only to be polite, but also because her pasties were quite good.

“Did you make these?” he asked. “They’re some of the best I’ve had.”

The woman positively beamed: “Yes, I’ve got my own special recipe--my grandmother’s originally.”

Harry nodded, no longer truly paying attention to her, because just behind her head, a plant had caught his eye. Certainly, there were tons of plants here, but this one look positively...feathery. 

Feigning a stretch, he craned his neck to see better, and while he was far from a plant expert, that plant bore a startling resemblance to the photos in the smuggling file. 

An herbology expert would be needed to confirm the plant’s identity, of course (and maybe he could recruit Neville for that) but it was enough to bring her in for questioning.

With that in mind, he grabbed for his wand, only to find that he couldn’t. In fact, he couldn’t move at all. He looked up at Mrs. Wiggins, and she was still smiling, but it was a little less kind than before.

“The Ministry,” she sniffed, “Always poking its nose where it does not belong. Meddling incompetents. These plants are my family, and they have a much better life here than they would in the wild.”

Was it just him, or was she steadily getting larger? No, that wasn’t it--the entire world was getting larger. Or no, it was just that he was getting smaller.

The shrinkage continued, disorienting, and making him want to vomit, except he no longer had a mouth. Abruptly, the change halted.

He was very small--only a little larger than the old witch’s hand. He could feel no muscles, not even those needed to take a breath (although strangely, it felt like breathing was something he no longer required). Equally strange was the fact that while he could still see, it did not feel like he had eyes. He certainly could not blink, or direct his vision in any way.

“There you go!” exclaimed the woman, brightly, “Much better. You make a very lovely barrel cactus. Of course turning you into a magical plant would have been so much more fun, but Muggle plants are significantly easier. Much less volatile.”

She smiled widely: “You should be grateful. I was very kind. The potion is my own recipe--adjusted so you can keep your human senses. And you’ll turn back eventually of course, but you’ll be stuck like this long enough for me to get my affairs in order.”

And then she picked up his pot, returned to the storefront, and placed him next to a row of plants of similar appearance.

***

In school, Draco Malfoy had been pants at herbology. Out of school, he was still pants at herbology.

Magical plants were just so tetchy. And unpredictable. And no matter the species, varietal, or his behavior, they inevitably hated him.

Muggle plants were a different story, however. They were just so...indifferent. At first it had disturbed him--they hardly seemed alive at all! He had yelled at them, thrown things, and called them demeaning names, and through it all, they had remained utterly apathetic.

It had taken him some time, but eventually he realized that their lack of reaction was strangely soothing.

Draco had initially become involved in Muggle Herbology (botany it was called, apparently) at the advice of his mind healer, who he’d hired after the war when it became apparent that while Voldemort was gone, Draco Malfoy’s problems were here to stay.

According to her, he needed a relaxing and rewarding hobby--and apparently Muggle gardening was perfect. Draco still wasn’t sure if this was actually a legitimate therapeutic method, or if she just wanted someone to share her hobby. She had a rather obsessive love of tulips.

Either way, Draco had found it to be relaxing, after he accepted the plants’ strange insentience. However, just because the plants didn’t hate him didn’t mean that he had any more success in keeping them alive.   
Thankfully, it had not taken him long to discover the astounding hardiness of cacti. Now, it was a Tuesday night and he was looking to expand his collection of hard-to-kill Muggle plants. 

Of course, the easiest place to obtain a Muggle plant would be a Muggle store, but there Draco drew the line. And so he was forced to frequent the variety of dusty and dilapidated Herbology shops that carried a small selection of Muggle plants as novelty items. 

Thankfully, Mrs. Wiggins’ usually had a better selection than most. As he walked into her store, half an hour before its closing time he was happy to see that he would not be disappointed. 

Since the last time he had visited she had added a small selection of barrel cacti. He picked up each specimen in turn and examined it from all sides. He wasn’t really sure what he was looking for in particular, but believed it was always important to look like you knew what you were doing.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, for the future of his plant selection) Mrs. Wiggins wasn’t fooled, and she materialized at his elbow, suggesting, “Get that one in the front. It’s healthier than the others--though don’t go telling anyone I told you that.” 

To Draco, it looked pretty much identical to the other five barrel cacti, but he took her word for it, and thus the newest addition to his collection was made.

***

Surprisingly, life as Draco Malfoy’s potted plant was less torturous than Harry Potter would have envisioned.

In fact, the other man seemed to care about his plants very deeply, fussing over them multiple times a day, and even humming to them softly and praising them for new growth.

Definitely, it was a little odd, and probably not something that Draco would want the world to know about him, but then again, Harry Potter hardly wanted the world to know that he spent significant time as a potted plant, so he imagined that when the potion finally wore off, the two of them would be on relatively equal footing.

If Draco gave Harry time to explain himself before hexing him, that was.

***

It was two weeks after Draco’s most recent visit to Mrs. Wiggins’ shop when he was woken in the middle of the night by an astonishing crash. He lept out of bed, summoned his wand, and darted to the living room, where it sounded like the crash had originated.

Once there, he remarked: “Harry Potter. Why am I not even surprised. Have my potted plants somehow offended you?” Draco gestured to cacti and potting soil that had been knocked off of his counter. He winced. Several of them did not look like they would survive.

Harry had the decency to look somewhat contrite: “I swear there’s a good explanation for this.”

***

“I cannot believe you,” Draco said, for what had to be the eighth time, “I actually cannot believe you. They call you the hero of the wizarding world, and you were defeated by an old lady’s baking.”

“She wasn’t even really a suspect! How was I supposed to know that she had baked pasties Essence of Barrel Cacti?” Harry defended.

“Essence of Barrel Cacti isn’t even a real potion. It must have been some sort of Arbofacti.” Draco said, unimpressed, “It’s a miracle you survived to attend Hogwarts, not to mention adulthood. I would have thought that even Muggle schools teach children not to accept pasties from strangers.”

Harry rubbed his eyes and wondered why he was arguing about this. His honor was a lost cause anyways; he was going to have to report to to the Ministry tomorrow with the full story so that they could call off the ‘find Harry Potter’ task force they had probably assembled in his absence. 

Celebrity had its upsides--namely that half the population would assemble to find you when you went missing--but currently was looking like a major downside. He was not looking forward to when the papers (inevitably) found out: “Harry Potter Spends Fortnight as Draco Malfoy’s Potted Plant.”

He was never going to hear the end of this.


End file.
